1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for performing automatic gain control (AGC) at a terminal in a wireless communication network.
2. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be capable of supporting communication for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such wireless networks include wireless wide area networks (WWANs), wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs), and wireless local area networks (WLANs).
In a wireless communication network, a terminal may receive signals from transmitters, which may be base stations and/or other terminals. The transmitters may transmit their signals at the same or different power levels. Furthermore, the transmitters may be located at different distances to the terminal and may thus have different pathloss to the terminal. The terminal may receive the signals from different transmitters at different received power levels. The terminal may perform AGC and adjust the gain of its receiver so that (i) strong signals are attenuated to avoid clipping an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) at the terminal and (ii) weak signals are amplified to occupy the full ADC range. By using the proper receiver gain, clipping of the ADC and degradation due to ADC clipping may both be avoided. It is thus desirable to effectively perform AGC at the terminal.